Honestly, Phee's incredibly impressive 50-40-90 season wasn't enough. IMHO both Phee AND her head coach hurt her chances down the stretch.
First, Phee was injured. After coming back, she had some terrific games, but also some not so great ones. In her last 10 games, she scored under 20 6 times, 2 of those were 10 and 12 total.
Second, she played under 27 minutes 5 times. I get trying to "save her" for the playoffs, but not when she's not getting enough shots.
Which brings me to my 3rd point. Too many games the # of shots taken was equally distributed between 3 or even 4 players including Phee. In the last 11 games, Phee took 13, 10, 23, 13, 16, 11, 16, 18, 12, 16, 9. An average of 14 shots per game.
A'ja, on the other hand, didn't average less than 30 minutes per game save for 1 - 25 minutes against Chicago. And she took over 20 shots on 4 occasions.
I get that the goal is to win the championship, but somehow Hammon was able to get A'ja more minutes and quite a few more shots while Reeve was mystifyingly unable to do so. IMHO kind of makes Reeve's "shock" at Phee not winning a bit suspect.
